That's unfortunate that you can't specifiy displaying lists in batches. If there are thousands of entries how would you limit the returned amount while still giving the user the opportunity to search for the entry they want?
For the sorting – if I do the control key method – will that ultimately be how the list is sorted for the end users. I want to sort by created by and then created columns so the users could very quickly see the last 50 entries or so from a list.