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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/555
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

What do you want to emphasize? If it's the person doing the action, by all means use active voice. "Heinrich Schliemann ate a sandwich" emphasizes Schliemann, while "the sandwich was eaten by Heinrich Schliemann" emphasizes the sandwich. Contrast this with "Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy", which seems more at home in a biography of Herr Schliemann, versus "Troy was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann".

Usually, the person and the action are the more interesting parts of the sentence, and people identify more with the person than the object. This typically means that active voice is more interesting and easier to read. (This holds even when the object is the more important part, which is one reason scientific papers are often unpleasant to read: "The correlation was found to be significant at p \< 0.01" is dryer than "We found the correlation to be significant a p \< 0.01", even though the important part is the correlation and not the investigators.) "Troy", on the other hand, grabs much harder than "Hermann Schliemann".

Original score: 6