I have soaked thousands of cards, including examples from virtually every major tobacco and caramel set. Most of the bad candidates for soaking have already been mentioned...E94, E98, colored Exhibits, Colgan's. I'd generally also recommend against soaking Old Judges, Fatimas or other similar glossy photographic cards as they can stain and warp in ways that can't be undone.
I do not in any way look at it as an alteration, simply because it is not affecting the card any more than blowing a piece of dust off of it would be. True alterations like trimming, recoloring, rebacking, etc all clearly change the composition of the card by adding, removing, or changing some aspect of the card's original state. Soaking does not do any of these things.
To answer an above comment, soaking in distilled water will not in any way affect the ph of the card and "pyrolysis" will not occur unless you are soaking your cards in a thermal vent at the bottom of the ocean or something. In fact, the temperature of paper would need to get to around 200 degrees before that process would begin to occur as it is basically the first stage of fire oxidation.
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