They would never dangle them out there if they hadn't changed them, like they did his diaries. In his diaries he'd talk about buying rounds of beers for the apostles, but you'll notice that in the typed version there is no mention of that.
Nothing the church puts out is bad for exmos, cuz the church is a hoax. They could build a time machine, send Uchtdorf back in time, have him take pictures of JS and the plates and Urim and Thummim, and put said hi rez pics on Mormon.org and it wouldn't help their hoax. A hoax is a hoax is a hoax.
Maybe I'm wrong (it is possible) but they showed the origninals on tv and so I assumed that the papers are actual copies of those originals so that people can see the pofits beautiful writing. So, I guess I need to find out if that is true. Could they change them up if they are originals? I guess they could hire what's his name....
While they might not be changed, they could certainly be selectively published. I'm sure only a fraction of the available material will be published, and they will be very choosy regarding which fraction makes it to print.
As far as I understand, the dirt has already been public for a long time, its just that the church is the last to make it so. Historians and critics of the church have already cited these sources and the subsequent historical problems related to them, so nothing in those papers is going to be earth shattering.
In addition, few Mormons are going to bother reading those papers. The only Mormons that will are going to read them will be the hard core historical nerds, who probably already know what's in them.
It doesn't mean the church is now going to have the juicy stuff in their manuals or be taught in Sunday School. Regular members are probably going to read the same whitewashed drivel in church manuals and Deseret Books they've always been reading and have no idea what's in the Joseph Smith Papers.
The only silver lining is that if one of us ex-Mo's is trying to share the truth with a TBM and they claim we are telling an anti-Mormon lie, it might be in one of those papers and we could then point it out to them as an "official" church source.