If we take Botkin to be the one doing research, singling out items in old copies of the NYT at Wordsmith University Library, connecting the items to the major characters of Pale Fire, then it should not be hard to imagine him putting on his Kinbote persona whilst mingling with the denizen of New Wye as its own form of scholarly, authorial, research; i.e. we should view the relation between Botkin and Kinbote chiefly as author to character, noting, of course, that such relationships often are based upon identification and wishfulness. Or to put it another way, Botkin's impersonations make a certain amount of sense from an authorial point-of-view, but how compelled he is, otherwise, to play this game is difficult to know since we know so little about Botkin. Given the comments attributed to Shade at the Hurley's party one imagines Kinbote changing from drab and unhappy to Kinbotean exuberance and liberation. This can be seen as positive and enjoyable in its own right. This line also seems to infer that Botkin is homosexually repressed, since a heterosexual male who is simply painfully shy would not likely choose for a new persona one that is flamboyantly gay. 

Shade's transformation into Kinbote, though, as suggested by Botkin's narrative in Kinbote's notes, is to be seen as uncontrollable and partially neurologically based.

Hopefully this helps confuse things.