The problem is that many people have only a poor ability to recognize the passive voice in the first place. This results in the examples being clunky, wordy messes that are bad because they're, well, clunky and wordy, and not because they're passive--indeed, you've often got only a fifty-fifty chance of the example passive voice actually being passive in the first place.
I'll point out that the commenter you're replying to used the passive voice, as did the one they responded to, and I suspect that such uses went unnoticed. Hell, I just rewrote the previous sentence to use the passive voice, and I wonder how many people think recognized that in the first place let alone think it worse for being so written.
> Hell, I just rewrote the previous sentence to use the passive voice
Well, sort of. You used the passive voice, but you didn't use it on any finite verbs, placing your example well outside the scope of the normal "don't use the passive voice" advice.
It would mean that somewhere in your sentence there's a clause headed by a passive verb. A finite verb is one that heads a clause.
This terminology is where we get the name of the "infinitive" form from, by the way.
As a rule of thumb, the nonfinite forms of a verb are its infinitives and participles. jcranmer used a passive participle, but all of his clauses are active. Unnoticed doesn't have a clause around it.
(He might have thought that go unnoticed is a passive form, perhaps of the verb notice (?), in which case that would just be an error.)
The problem is that many people have only a poor ability to recognize the passive voice in the first place. This results in the examples being clunky, wordy messes that are bad because they're, well, clunky and wordy, and not because they're passive--indeed, you've often got only a fifty-fifty chance of the example passive voice actually being passive in the first place.
I'll point out that the commenter you're replying to used the passive voice, as did the one they responded to, and I suspect that such uses went unnoticed. Hell, I just rewrote the previous sentence to use the passive voice, and I wonder how many people think recognized that in the first place let alone think it worse for being so written.