I have to create an overview for a competition with about ±400 competitors. They are separate in the "best 100"-group and the others.
A random number of competitors shown as thumbnails with (if so) an 100-tag would work. (Show 10 competitors randomly)
How would a complete overview of the 100 best look like, without prioritizing single ones ("prioritize" because they are shown on page 1 of x or shown first in the slider)?
Let the user choose a view for sorting the top 100 and for sorting the others.
Provide a few options (e.g. last entry, last entry into top 100, fast risers, last updated, by name, random and etc).
Choose a default.
An example you can look at is the tabs in this site for selecting which questions you will see.
If I understand the question, perhaps you could use a google maps type of interaction where you show all images but you can zoom in and out and pan and explorer in as much or as little detail as you like. You could add a randomizer button or a 'jump to random entry'.
There are also other alternatives to Google maps - There was something called seadragon - now called Deep Zoom which uses Silverlight - see the Hard Rock Memorabilia for an example.
And another option is to create one massive image from all the entries and use a service like Zoom.it - depends if you need to 'host' the content and provide per-entry interaction or not. Also, this wouldn't provide randomised positions unless you created a set of collages.
You could also randomise entries on a pinterest style view.
